1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of protective devices and systems for electrical power transmission and distribution systems, and more particularly to a manual trip control method and arrangement to manually trip a plurality of circuit interrupters.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various circuit interrupters and control arrangements are known in the prior art. For example, typical circuit reclosers for the electric power distribution field include magnetic-actuator-driven vacuum interrupters. While these circuit reclosers are provided for each phase of a multi-phase electrical system, the magnetic actuators are utilized to trip and reclose on single-phase fault conditions without affecting the other unfaulted phases. However, there are situations when it is desirable to trip all the poles for the phases and the recloser controls locked out so as to prevent the reclosers from closing. For example, when performing maintenance, it is desirable to manually trip all the phases. Also, whenever the reclosers are manually tripped, it is desirable to accomplish the tripping within a short period of time, e,g, less than two seconds, to prevent single-phasing any multi-phase motor loads. Typical recloser installations often use individual pole units and do not have common base and mounting structure that might allow for ganged manual tripping. Accordingly, individual manual trip handles on each of the reclosers must be operated such that it is not possible to trip all the poles within any short period of time. Since the reclosers must be operated from the ground with a long flexible pole, the time between the tripping of the individual pole units can be many seconds.
While the prior art arrangements may be generally useful, these prior arrangements do not provide desirable manual tripping of a plurality of reclosers.